I’ve started reading Guns Germs and Steel again. I had a hard time getting into it when I first tried to read it, but I guess my reading tastes have matured a bit cause now I’m having a hard time putting it down. The book chronicles the rise of civilization in different parts of the world and analyzies why some succedded over others and how some were able to achive, Guns, Germs and Steel before others and thus become the dominant civilizations.

One of the neat facts I’ve read from it is that the Alpaca and LLama (classified together) are one of the 14 animals domesticated that have been a factor in civilization. I was very excited to read this. Also I found it very interesting that the Alpaca and Llama’s wild ancestor is contested. I orginally read it was the Guanaco, but some recent research has shown that the vicuña may actually be it’s ancestor. Apparently there has been some work using Mitochondrial and Micro Satellite DNA that has changed this long held belief. While there appears to have been alot of bi-directional hybridization between the two species it seems fairly conclusive: “Finally, combined marker analysis on a subset of samples confirms the microsatellite interpretation and suggests that the alpaca is descended from the vicuña…”

This also should lead to the Alpaca’s classification being changed to Vicugna pacos. Intense stuff indeed.

You can find the article here: At the Royal Society Website

Guanaco

Vicuña

So exciting stuff. ok back to work.